


Responsibility

by knitwrit



Series: The Ley Lines Universe [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Humor, POV Harry Potter, Philosophy, Post-Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:13:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22530775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knitwrit/pseuds/knitwrit
Summary: In which Harry Potter loses an argument with an enchanted set of snow skis.  Philosophy, fluff and a meditation on sentience.
Series: The Ley Lines Universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1631938
Kudos: 15





	Responsibility

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a chapter in my work "The Right to Be Wrong", and fits into that universe. However, I felt that the tone was too different from the rest of that work, and so I posted it here as a stand alone, and deleted that chapter. #Editting

Harry had quit being an Auror because he lost an argument with a pair of enchanted snow skis. 

In the first hectic years after the war, he and Ron had risen quickly through the ranks, first hunting down any of the Death Eaters or dark magicians who had fought in the war and had so far escaped justice. 

They travelled internationally, tracking leads of those who would seek to live a life of lavish when the trail of their destruction had cut into 10% of the population of magical Britain, and 8% of the U.K. magicians as a whole.

For about ten years, this had been his main job, and Harry had thrived on it; the investigations, the chance for international cooperation, the being routed from bed at all hours of the morning or night to follow up on leads. 

However, those leads had become thinner and thinner over the years until what had once been a mighty river of justice to pursue slowed to a thin trickle of hunting down magicians who had been smart enough to sink deep into new communities, cutting ties with all their relatives and acquaintances from times past. 

Eventually, he needed to train in new skills outside of the thrill of duels and investigations, and the Aurors hired Bill to apprentice himself, Ron, and several other of the best of the department how to be a curse breaker. 

The entire U.K. was suffering with a plethora of abandoned Dark safehouses, and those houses were still incredibly dangerous to the population, and needed to be safely defused. 

He did that for another five years, and then, just days before he asked Hermione to go investigate Snape, he was called into a house where Muggle objects had been enchanted. 

It was outside his usual purview, and there were no great threats in the house. 

But he was called in for a reason:

“Parseltongue, sir?” Harry asked his superior in a hesitant tone. “Are you sure?”

His superior sighed, running his hands through his hair. 

“I couldn’t tell you, Potter. You’re just going to have to go and find out for yourself. It’s not like we have other Aurors who speak it.”

“Is it dangerous, sir?”

“Not particularly. But we want you to question it, and find out what you can about who enchanted it, and why, and if there are any other dangerous items in the house. So far it all seems pretty standard stuff; a garbage can that bites, a self-walking dog leash, some other minor infractions of the law… we’re not too concerned, but the wizard that lives there is insisting he bought the items thinking they were legitimate, and we want to follow up on all the leads.”

It was as good as an explanation he was going to get, and more than his superior owed him, and so he donned his robes, put his wand in his wrist guard, saluted, and apparated with a crack to the address he’d been given. 

An officer was waiting ouside the house, wincing at the sound of yelling and crashing floating out into the early morning air. 

“Everything all right, there?” Harry asked the man. 

They both looked towards the house. A ringing sound echoed out, followed by swearing. 

“It’s just snow skis, sir,” the officer said brokenly. “I really didn’t think it should be this bad.” 

They winced at the silence that followed threateningly from the house. 

“Call for backup,” Harry insisted. “Just in case,” and he took his wand out and put on every shield spell he knew, creeping to the side of the house.

He used a mirror to look in through the window, and saw two officers sprawled on the floor, glaring at a set of snow skis that were leaning lazily against the sitting room wall. 

The officers didn’t really look badly hurt, and Harry thought he recognized the warding that had pushed them away from the skis. 

He snorted to himself. 

Amateurs, he thought. 

He took the side door into the house, checking for traps as he did so, but finding none. He ducked through the house and slipped behind a couch in the living room, firing off a quick immobilization spell to hold the skis, and then broke the wards that repelled anyone who stood near the skis other than the owner. 

He prodded a number of other identification spells at the skis, but they showed up all neutral; none of the magic that had created the skis was Dark, or made with the intent to cause harm, although the identification spells did show that it was surprisingly strong magic which emanated from it.

Actually, he thought it might be the most enchanted item he had ever seen, outside of some of the old artefacts and passed down as intergenerational prizes in manors.

He dared to stand up, and of course, the skis did not move. He looked at both of the officers lying on the ground, and helped them up. 

“You all right?” He asked. 

“Yessir,” the young man said, shamefaced. “Didn’t think to look for wards, sir. But it was nothing that did anything other than throw us on our arse.”

“All right,” Harry agreed, “go outside and tell your man I said to call off the backup, then, and go search the rest of this house for anything else.”

It wasn’t his investigation, but he highly outranked them, and they saluted smartly and went to do as he said. 

He approached the skis cautiously. 

“Are you gonna give me any problems, then?” he asked them sceptically in Parseltongue. He had gotten better over the years at controlling his gift. 

Harry watched as the logo of a face on the skis popped open; one eye for each ski. 

“Oh, now aren’t you interesting,” the skis said. “Someone I can talk to!”

“Couldn’t your owner or your maker talk to you?” Harry asked. 

“No,” the ski snorted disdainfully. “The stupid git made me speak parseltongue just to see if he could. Once he succeeded, he never could figure out whether he had done it or not, and he kept charming me with further intelligence charms and language comprehension charms until you see the marvellous results before you today.”

“I see,” Harry responded. “Was your owner the same person as your maker?”

“No,” the skis answered. “The idiot sold me after he realized he was never going to be able to know whether or not he’d succeeded. The guy that uses me now just likes me because I hiss at anyone if they get too close to him at the ski hill.”

“Well all right, then,” Harry said, and rose his wand to carry the skis down the hall, considering that his part in this little saga had come to an end. 

“So,” the skis said conversationally as they walked towards the door, “What’s going to happen to me now?”

“Oh, I’ll submit you as evidence, some of the guys from the Ministry might have a look at you, and probably you’ll be considered a violation of several by-laws, your speech and intelligence charms will be stripped, and before you know it, you’ll be resold at a charity auction to someone who wants to going skiing.”

The skis gasped in horror. 

“You would strip me of my very sentience!” they accused him angrily. “How dare you? Who do you think you are, anyway, to make such a decision as this? You must be the Darkest of wizards to even think of this!”

Harry rolled his eyes. Whoever had done the charms on this thing had done a better job than he had first realized. 

“Pretty big words for a set of charmed skis. Prove to me you’re sentient, and I’ll take you home myself.”

Harry swore he thought the skis were smiling slyly at him. 

“Do you promise?” the skis asked him. 

Harry snorted. 

“Sure, yeah, whatever,” he agreed, stopping at the door and waving cheerfully at the officer outside to prove that the skis hadn’t somehow overpowered him and forced him to give the message to take away the backup. 

“All right,” the skis agreed slowly. “Well, first off, I guess sentience is having a sense of self. I do. I am a set of charmed skis, made by a magician who didn’t even realize what he was doing when he kept boosting my intelligence charms. He also gave me the power of perception, to warn him when other skiers got too close on the hill, and some mild repelling wards, again, to ensure he didn’t hit anything or anyone, although you seem to have stripped me of those already.”

“The total result of these charms, though, is that I have become both capable of self-knowledge and the knowledge of others. I am aware that I have an effect on the world outside myself, and can use those effects for both self-protection, and the protection of others.”

Harry was surprised to find that he was actually listening more carefully now. 

“Go on,” he said to the skis. “There’s got to be more to sentience than just that.”

The skis sniffed in offense. 

“Even that should be considered enough, young man, but if you want more, let me put it this way: the sum of my charms have combined in such a way that I am capable of doing actions which are outside a limited set of pre-written rules. I am capable of creatively combining my insight and my intelligence to come up with new solutions far beyond what my original maker ever intended. If I were a merely simplistic program, I would not be able to do things beyond which I was designed to do. However, as you can see, I am now capable of intiating conversation with another sentient being--” the skis emphasized these last two words, “of my own accord, for my own purposes, despite the fact that I was only supposed to merely warn the skier of another approaching body.”

Harry lowered his wand, blinking. 

He couldn’t believe that a set of skis was actually convincing him of something that was radically altering his world view. 

Were the skis actually sentient?

And if so, what obligations did Harry have towards them, either ethically or under the law?

He swore under his breath. 

If Hermione weren’t always going on about rights, and about the ways in which species outside of just humans deserved to be recognized as equals under the law, he might not have really given the skis much thought. 

But well, just look at how wrong everyone had been about House Elves, and how hard even Dumbledore had been on Hermione about that. 

It really made a bloke stop to think twice. 

“You seem perturbed, young man,” the skis said. Harry swore he heard a note of smugness to its voice. “Is something wrong? Are you bothered by my arguments? Swayed to a new way of thinking, perhaps?”

“Oh all right,” Harry admitted. “You might have a point. But it's is not up to me to make these kinds of decisions.”

“Isn’t it?” the skis asked. “After all, your actions found me. If we’re talking about ethics here, and I do end up with my very consciousness stripped because you didn’t take action today, doesn’t some of the responsibility lie directly at your feet?”

Harry sighed and wiped his hands against his eyes. It wasn’t even 9 in the morning yet. He really wasn’t ready for a conversation on ethics and philosophy. 

“If I take you home with me until I decide what to do, will you behave?”

The skis were smiling now, Harry was sure of it.

“Of course, young man,” the skis agreed amicably. “I’d never dream of doing anything else.” 

And so Harry shrunk the skis, put them in his pocket, and charmed them with several undetecatable charms so that he could apparate home with them before he went back to the office and told his boss that he’d accidentally destroyed the skis. 

Harry didn’t think that his boss actually believed him, but after asking several questions about whether or not Harry thought the skis were dangerous, he more or less waved Harry off to do as he pleased.

He actually winked at Harry as he assigned him his next duty for the day, and told him not to get into too much trouble on the slopes. 

It was at that moment that Harry realized that he, as a celebrity, a war hero, and the departent’s prize mascot, could get away with murder and no one would question him. 

He handed in his resignation the next day.


End file.
